The State Counsellor [antikvár]

Prologue The windows on the left were blank, sightless wall eyes, crusted with ice and wet snow. The panes of glass jangled dolefully as the wind hurled the soft, sticky flakes against them and swayed the heavy carcass of the carriage to and fro in an obstinate effort to shove the train off the slippery rails and send it tumbling over and over, like a long black sausage, across the broad white plain -over the frozen river, over the dead fields, and on towards the blurred streak of dark forest at the distant junction of earth and sky. A wide expanse of this mournful landscape could be examined through the remarkably clear-sighted windows on the right, but what point was there in looking out at it? Nothing but snow, nothing but the wild whistling of the wind, the low, murky sky -darkness, cold and death. On the inside, however, the ministerial saloon carriage was warm and welcoming: a cosy gloom, tinged with blue from the silk lampshade, logs crackling behind the bronze door of the stove, a teaspoon tinkling rhythmically in a glass. The small but excellently equipped study - with a conference table, leather armchairs and a map of the Empire on the wall - was hurtling along at a speed of fifty versts an hour through the raging blizzard and the dead light of the inclement winter dawn. An old man with a virile and imperious face was dozing in one of the armchairs, with a warm Scottish rug pulled right up to his chin. Even in sleep the grey brows were knitted sternly, the corners of the mouth were set in world-weary folds, and from time to time the wrinkled eyelids fluttered nervously. The circle of light cast by the lamp swayed this way and that.